IT SolutionsEnterprise Solution POLICY PRODUCTION

Making a Statement

With multiple lines of insurance, a carrier needs common tools that cross the enterprise to produce customized policy documents.

If there is one thing insurance carriers are known for, its producing paper documents for their policyholders. It has taken insurers a long while to understand the waste of time, money, and manpower this dependency on paper has cost them, but even difficult statements and forms can become manageable with the right solution. [Our policy] statements include generic and customized information with a policyholders unique situation represented, says Tom Gravenish, CIO for Equitable Life of Canada. The statements tend to be pretty complex.

Some of Equitables product classes have statements once a year, others quarterly. Still others are sent out to individual policyholders on their contract anniversary. This means were sending out statements daily, notes Gravenish. We needed a way of producing these complex and customized statements effectively and automatically. In addition, we wanted all system-produced client communication to be immediately accessible online for our producers and customer service representatives.

Equitable is a multiline carrier that offers insurance and savings products to both individuals and group policyholders, explains Gravenish. Our strategy is to leverage common tools across multiple lines of business, he says. Our initial implementation was within our individual line. However, we have since utilized the product within our group line of business, as well. This approach not only reduces our total cost of ownership but also reduces our training needs and accelerates our deployment capabilities.

Equitable sent a request for information to six vendors, and after reviewing the results, the carrier entertained presentations from three vendors using samples of the carriers own data files. The evaluation involving both IT and line area personnel took about three months before Whitehill Technologies ultimately was selected. We chose a software solution called Whitehill Transport, says Gravenish. [White- hill] already was a proven entity in the legal industry and now has made significant inroads with insurance companies.

The first part of the project with Whitehill was for policyholder documents and was up and running in May 2003. Whitehill quickly helped us improve our ability to deliver accurate information on time and deliver a unified data repository for all stakeholders, affirms Gravenish. He adds the second phase to print the carriers annual report was completed in early 2004.

It works very well for us to have one tool that can access any type of data we have, whether structured or unstructured, and turn it into any format and then automatically distribute it, he says. Equitable sent out about 30,000 financial policyholder statements in 2004 using Whitehill Transport, Gravenish reports. The software pumps the statements out into PDF format. Then, theyre printed and mailed to policyholders, he says. It has worked very well. Weve been able to take data from a variety of sources, customize it, and get it out the door quickly and efficiently.

Whitehill Transport is a server-based software product, working on a Windows platform, he explains. Appli-cation systems extract information from our databases and send it to designated folders, he says. Whitehill Transport monitors those directories and converts the extracted data to XML, which allows the creation of customizable data tags. It then invokes XLST and XSL:FO to render the XML automatically into one of 13 output formats.

The return on investment for Equitable has been significant and quick, attests Gravenish. We saw our ROI within days of having the statements running through the system, he says. Additionally, by storing electronic copies of our customers statements, we can provide exact copies of the documents for our customer service team on its computers.

Gravenish believes purchasing the system was the best step for Equitable. If we had attempted to do this internally, it would have cost us many months in IT time, only provided a partial solution, impacted the timing of other development projects and other major network integration solutions, and would have cost way too much.

ROBERT REGIS HYLE

Case File
THE PROBLEM
A life insurer needed an
automated system to produce
customized statements.

THE CARRIER
Equitable Life of Canada
Web Site: www.equitable.ca
Assets Under Management: $1 billion

THE SOLUTION
Whitehill Transport
from Whitehill Technologies
Web Site: www.whitehilltech.com